"Flip Cup!" "Who wants to play pong?" Inevitably at any party or social gathering there will be a slightly (or blatantly) intoxicated partier yelling such terms. It is a part of the drinking culture, a phenomenon that has been around for centuries and the topic that brings smiles to alcoholics and fear to lightweights. IT is drinking games.

We all have our favorite game, or all know of numerous games to participate in when a party needs more drunks. Very rarely, however, do you have the conversation regarding the origin of drinking games. There is always talk of how you yourself or your group of friends began playing a certain game and from whom you learned that game, but there is never the conversation from where that game came before that.

Drinking games can be traced all the way back to Ancient Greece. In Greece, Plato's Symposium "The Drinking Party" is the first account of drinking games being played. It involved a bunch of over-privileged upper class alcoholics chugging wine then slapping the bowl and passing it to the next person. "WHAT?!" Plato slapped the bag! Now that wasn't the only ancient game developed in Greece.

Kottabos, a game involving throwing wine using dregs (get your dictionary) to hit targets, was another game developed around 5th century BC. People always say that times change, and our society is much different from previous societies, but I feel I would fit right in throwing wine and slapping the bowl with Plato.

The Greeks sure knew how to do it, which makes me proud to be part of a fraternity, but the Chinese were just as wild, if not more so. The Tang Dynasty was famous for something other than re-opening the Silk Road (get an encyclopedia). Their specialty was riddle and dice games. Dice games assigned numbers to certain types of players (young, most talkative, last to join, etc.) and every time those numbers were rolled the players had to drink for a designated period of time. The Chinese did not screw around and had designated referees and rules to keep game play from getting out of hand. No drunken idiots were ruining the fun for the rest of them because if they did they would be kicked out of the game and not invited back.

Drinking games have exploded since these times to where there are more games than any one person could possibly imagine. There are speed drinking, movie/ TV games where you drink when certain agreed upon situations happen, dice games, skill games, thinking games, and card games just to name a few.

One interesting game that was developed in Portugal is "The Game of the Slap" which involves players slapping each other until one gives up and is made to drink. The history of many of these games has developed through word of mouth and the playing of the games. Let's just look at the ever popular Beer Pong (Beirut to some). These two games are staples at any college party.

Beer Pong is a game using paddles trying to get a ping pong ball into cups filled with alcohol. Lehigh University is associated with making popular the fad of not using paddles and shooting the ball with your hand. It is said that the game was played by people before this, but became regular in the mid 1980s. This game was changed around the 1970s to the ever popular college party game of Beirut. Beirut was its original name coming from the similarity of the balls dropping into the cups compared to the bombings between East and West Beirut in Lebanon during their war in the 70s.

Although there are many drinking games, and they have been around for centuries, there is not a lot written about their history. Let's be honest, who thinks to write down how they found out about a game considering the people are hammered and just looking for a good time. The true history of drinking games lies in the minds and lost thoughts of the people who participate in them. This history will continue to be hazy for years to come as the brightest minds pull together to innovate new games. Besides, everyone always enjoys a good drinking game.